


The Familiar

by Cluegirl



Category: Harry Potter - Rowling
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-08-19
Updated: 2010-08-19
Packaged: 2017-10-11 04:12:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 921
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/108244
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cluegirl/pseuds/Cluegirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Potions Master has allies he reveals to no one.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Familiar

Thirty-six inches about the chest, sixteen at the neck, twenty-eight at the waist. Twenty-five inches from shoulder to turn-cuffed wrist, thirty inches from waist to the tails that brush the tops of his boots. Black wool dyed so thickly with magic and secrets that no force could fade its depth. The fabric has a sumptuous weight and a rich hand to it, made the more graceful for the slubbed ebony silk which lines the folds where no eye can see.

Alone of all inhabitants of the world, that hidden silk could speak to the truth of the man. It knows the intimacies of his skin and scent, but it reserves its voice for him alone. It whispers sibilant comfort when ire or nerves tighten his breath and cord his shoulders with pain. It hisses of pleasure when his hands and mind and heart fill up with alchemy and magic, (though the wool might grumble vainly about smelly fumes.) It rustles of loneliness and regret when his long, deft fingers unfasten the buttons and pull the robes away, letting the chilly dungeon air in next to his skin.

Upon that, the silk and the wool agree; he ought not ever to take them off. Without them, he is unmade, unmanned and defenseless. They know they stand between the man and the hell the world has made for him. They know that without their buffering armor the tears and terrors can sometimes find him in the dead, dark hours after midnight. They hear his choked voice and can only listen helplessly as the monsters feed undeterred.

All they can do is slide comfort about him in the morning's grimy light, when all is done but the trembling. Then the silk draws the chill from his taught-strung skin like a lover's caress, soothing sweetly as he settles it over his hard-held shoulders. Then the wool hugs him snugly, reassuringly, quelling the lingering tremors button by closing button.

And of course the buttons are allies as well; Gargoyle bone, all hundred and thirty of them, as black and gleaming as the eyes he shows to the world outside. They march in glittering rows at his breast, wrists, back and sides, offering glares in every direction. They keep watch for the man as he swims the deep and hazardous waters of his days and nights.

Each is one a secret his lips will never utter, each one a pain or a price or a privilege to which no torment can force him to give tongue. His white fingers count them like beads on an excessive rosary: This one at his inner elbow, an injustice from childhood days. That one just under his sternum, an endless night of horror and regret and vomit-tasting fear. This other at his throat, the toad-swallowing self-disgust he endures when he subverts his intellect to egotistical children and their scheming, petty games. They keep these truths of him in a hundred and thirty steely black, silent stares.

There was, in ancient days, a Goddess worshiped among men: Wisdom and warfare and sharp-cutting eyes, justice and honour and triumph of the worthy. And too, the work of the weavers She blessed -- setting Her power in the warp and the weft and the delicate strength that played between the two. From Her loom could come fabric more rigid than steel, more supple than the morals of a greedy man. The work of her hands blessed heroes, kings, and true-hearted wanderers, it was said, and no force could tear those threads asunder.

But this clothing is of no Goddess's making; if anything, it is the stronger for its base origins. Its warp is this one man's loneliness, his isolation, and the lesson proven over and over like the repeat of a hammered bell throughout his life -- No one loves the likes of you for free, you must pay for every kindness sooner or later. The weft is a sharp, ragged weave of mistakes and triumphs, pulled tight between a thousand near-misses and barely-rescued tragedies where incalculable losses skated by on a mathematical probability and a shuttle of luck.

Through it all; each time he has nearly died, each time he has nearly killed, the robe has been with him -- protector, shield, and safe place to hide. And when the blood did stain his hands, and when places inside himself died from the shame of it, the robe was there. It forgave him for surviving, and it never showed a stain, nor a scorch, nor a single sign of his maiming.

And when the loneliness drives him to reach for another pulse against his own, to put the robe aside and clothe himself only in sweat and recklessness, it even forgives him then. It will always do so, because one truth ripples through the ebony folds; whether burned, torn, or bloodied, the robe knows it will always belong to him, cleave to him, love him. And it likewise knows that no matter how naked the world may conspire to strip the man, no matter what its demands, distractions and damnations, one thing is certain: When dawn cracks through the darkness, and the hidden things go back into hiding, the man will always put on the robe again.

He will cover his whiteness with black. He will shield his spare hardness in soft-hanging, voluptuous folds. He will fasten every one of his hundred and thirty secrets. And for a little while -- another day, at least -- he will stand brave against the world, and not entirely alone.

Fin


End file.
